Traditional entertainment systems for out-of-home use, for example in restaurants or bars, are typified by the jukebox that automatically plays selected gramophone records or compact discs after the insertion of a coin or coins. Originally, jukebox units were stand-alone units in venues such as restaurants and bars. More recently, game entertainment units have been placed in venues to allow patrons to play electronic games, such as electronic card games, after insertion of a fee using coins or some other method of payment. One disadvantage of some prior entertainment systems is that each freestanding unit, be it a music unit or a game unit, has a relatively small collection of music or games stored on the unit itself. This limits the user's selection and also requires that the available selection of games or music be updated when it includes too many unpopular selections.
Some prior systems have the capability to update a music selection from a remote location. In such a system, the update procedure occurs at intervals and during the update procedure the music unit is inoperative. It is a disadvantage of prior systems that the update procedure requires taking a music unit out of operation. This may necessitate performing updates more infrequently than may be desirable and precludes the real-time download of user-requested music during the operation of the unit. Another disadvantage of prior systems is that the way in which music selections are updated and stored is inefficient in terms of processing time and storage space required. For example, in some prior systems a separate catalog file containing song identification information and memory management information must be stored on the music unit.
Another limitation of traditional electronic entertainment systems is that even in venues where both music entertainment and game entertainment exist, game entertainment units and music entertainment units with individual capabilities exist separately. A user of a game unit, for example, cannot play music available in the venue without leaving the game unit to go to the music unit.
Yet another limitation of existing electronic entertainment systems is that they do not have real-time access to the Internet so that users in a venue may access the Internet for activities such as Internet browsing and shopping or playing tournament games from the same unit that allows music selection. Existing electronic entertainment systems are further limited in that they do not allow easy integration of a variety of peripheral devices, such as payment hardware and software or external game controllers.